Successful Blog

Panning for Gold: How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?

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Are Off Course 98% of the Time?

relationships button

Did you know that an airplane flying from New York to LA is off course 98% of the time?

Just as a driver is always moving the steering wheel to keep the car pointed in the right direction, the pilot is constantly adjusting based on the information he’s taking in — from the instruments, from the crew, from air traffic control, from every source he recognizes as relevant and valuable.

Wise individuals and great companies do the same thing. We get to our goals by constantly adjusting. Yet, for some reason, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that we or the organizations we work with have control over the forces outside and around us. It’s just not so.

We can manage what’s within our power to manage. But more importantly, we can adjust, innovate, and grow if we if we find the relevant and valuable information about the rest.

How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?

Individuals and organizations that are growing are curious and information hungry. We are personally involved in work and business, but we don’t take information personally. We work through an information gathering process again and again in a spiraling, overlapping, scaffolded fashion. We use the latest listening tools, but even more we use our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds to decipher what is relevant and valuable to their goals.

  • Listen actively. It’s so powerful to set aside filters that would have us hear only what supports our current world view. Looking for other perspectives, other voices, different, radical, outrageous ideas offers a diverse pool from which to choose and challenges our assumptions.
  • Test what you hear. We ask folks who are talking about what they’re saying to confirm that the message we received is clear. Then we ask other folks if that message makes sense in their lives too.
  • Adjust and adapt to the new information. We steer. Steering isn’t all controlling. It’s altering our world view to include what we have just learned.
  • Share. We make sure that the right folks know. We tell other people. Organizations tell customers, employees, shareholders, prospects, and key stakeholders.

Sounds a little like panning for gold — with each pan we use a finer sifter. With each pan we get closer to what we want to know.

While you’re listening, consider and reconsider what you’re listen for.
How do you find relevant and valuable information?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Social Media Marketing: It's Not About the Champagne!

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It’s Not About Finding Customers Either

When new clients ask questions about marketing with social media, it’s getting easier to determine who’s going to be successful. It’s not their goals that identify them as understanding the social business culture. It’s the way they view their product and the people who use it.

The questions they ask quickly reveal who understands the new social climate, who realizes that it’s not about finding customers for their products, but about using their products to connect people to other people. For folks still steeped in broadcast marketing, the conversation quickly turns to product features, uses, and lead generation.

Old thinking was hard enough.

The new thinking is even harder to execute. It brings people much further into the picture. Now we have to show how our products bring people together. Like great design, great products and great marketing call attention to and serve their audience.

It’s not about the champagne or the size of the bubbles … it’s about the celebration!

Have you seen any great examples of marketing that connected people with people?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Have You Tried Negotiating from the Same Side of the Table?

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Colgate Palmolive and Metzer Associates!

Monday, at a meeting at the Chicago Executive Summit, Louise asked how the SOBCon conference this year compared to last. She was surprised to hear that in this economy attendance and sponsorship are both tracking higher. We discussed what might be contributing factors:

  • an even more dynamic, high-value content offer
  • the increased interest in social media
  • the longevity of the conference
  • the return to such a fabulous venue — the city and the Summit facilities
  • and one other … more practice at partnering with sponsors.

Last year as I was putting together the sponsor kit for SOBCon08, I faced a marketer’s problem. How do you communicate the value proposition of a conference with a potential of 150 attendees to potential sponsors who would rather be reaching 150,000?

Knowing Where to Sit at the Table

In trying to find the correct sponsor value proposition, I considered the people who come to the conference. This isn’t a room of 150 “ones” — people who never met each other — but rather one 150 — people who are connected to each other. I thought I had it. I could even explain it.

If one evangelist can move a crowd, imagine what a swarm can do.

I’ve been wrong before. On it’s own the idea of a network of 150, didn’t carry much sway in the minds of sponsors who were looking for more concrete value.

I’d been offering a transaction for sale. I have this. This is why it’s of value. I pass the contract across the table. The magic didn’t happen until I metaphorically moved my chair to the other side of the table. It’s easier to make a deal when I sit beside the person I want to make a deal with.

“What are your goals for the next two quarters?”

“How can we configure a part of the conference to help you there? Would doing this work? Suppose we added an interaction like this one?”

From the same side of the table it’s easy find mutual goals and a path where doing business is natural.

This year, I built the conference with flexibility for sponsors goals inside their role as participants. I’m pleased and grateful that as a result I’m announcing that Colgate Palmolive and Metzger Associates have joined our sponsor team.

and

We love all of our sponsors: Wal-mart, Allstate, IttyBiz, BuzzCorps, Blog Catalog, Proforma, One2One Network, Pathable, and Summit Executive Center. And can’t wait for the chance to work at the same table with them and you!

Have you tried negotiating from the same side of the table?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook.

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

See the value of a powerful network!

How Do You Make the Dream Within You Visible?

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Do You Dream a Dream?

We unconsciously believe “What you see is what you get.”

When I started this quest for visible authenticity, I didn’t realize how important it would be. I didn’t know how hard I’d been working to get past what people assumed about me. I thought it was just my shyness from childhood kicking in. Now with minor changes barely in place, I already see a difference in how people are responding.

After our first meeting in November, Kali wrote …

“Liz’s visual presence is perfect for someone, just not Liz Strauss. It sorely misrepresents who she is and the depth of her talent. If the bulk of Liz’s interactions are vocal or written, she may be less aware of the impact of her visual image – but I am certain that it is affecting her life.”

“I am confident that when Liz is in front of people, she is taken less seriously than she should be,”

The same could be said of Susan Boyle the amazing, inspiring woman in this video. She wasn’t taken less seriously than she should be. Even if you’ve seen this video before, watch again. Experience what happens when people realize “what you see isn’t always what you get.”

YouTube keeps disconnecting the embed. You can also view it here.

When we see each other’s dreams, visibly authentically, we are drawn into to them.
Susan made her dream visible. Imagine if everything about her shared her dream — what then?

Do you dream a dream? How do you make the dream within you visible?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Make your dream visible.

Have You Ever Seen a Real-Life Social Business Ecosystem?

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This Social Thing Has Been Around for a While

We act like social networking is a new thing or that social media hasn’t been around since the first cave paintings. Who are we convincing? We learn the rules of relationships before we learn to read. Then we get into business and progressively learn how to undo them.

The part that is new thing was separating the “personal” from the “business.”

If you think about it, it’s … um … inhuman.

How can you give personal service when you leave relationships at the door?

Now we’re talking about social networking and social media marketing. Social business is not a new thing.

What Every Small Town Always Knew About Social Business

Step into any small town — say a town of 2000. Visit the general store and watch the owner go through a day of business. It may strike you that it’s a little like watching a Twitterstream.

  • Connecting conversation: The owner will have a short chat with customers about their families or their businesses.
  • Extending Relationships: Hang around and you’ll probably see the owner head off with a vendor to have lunch at a local diner — a “meetup” to “eat-up.”
  • Social Networking: The store owner will introduce the diner folks to the vendor. And they all know the lawyer and the banker.
  • Reciprocity: The diner owner will probably stop by the store later to pick what she needs for dinner.
  • Co-opetition: The store owner will probably leave huge tip because he knows that business is slow at the diner.
  • Multiplicity of Contexts: The store owner will see the diner owner and the vendor at the ball field when their kids’ teams play each other.
  • Mutual History and Values: Some customers and owners went to the same schools together. A few of them might even remember who wet his pants in first grade and who has a criminal record for staying out past curfew — when they still had one.

In small towns, businesses build a history together that is linked and interconnected. To try to check the social at the door would be ridiculous. Relationships and conversation are the currency that builds the ecosystem. Authenticity, trust, and reputation pile on the transactions that have been made on handshakes and over conversations at weddings.

People invest in each other. The resulting business has the same quality as the relationships.

Have you ever seen a real-life social business ecosystem?
Think we have a chance of building that on the Internet?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook.

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Invest, Learn, Grow!

How Do You Invite a Shy Company to Taste Social Media?

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Sometimes a Taste Is All We Need

Last night David Panscot wrote a compelling comment on my blog. His question was how do we get people trained to broadcast a message to become part of a culture of trust relationships?

He already knows what we all do — it’s hard to change thinking like that. It requires a cultural shift. It takes empowerment to face the risk of doing something that goes against what “we’ve always done.”

I always think of how Baskin Robbins gets us to try something new. They give us a taste before we buy.

Here are five ways to invite a shy company to take a taste of social media.

  1. Invite a member of the organization to be an advisor on social media project. Ask him or her to sit in on calls as you decide the direction of your plans.
  2. Invite the organization to become a sponsor by offering to lend a hand in the form of design work on your marketing effort.
  3. Invite two or three traditional organizations to participate in a survey that you might send to your customers about how they might like to interact with your product or your web pressence. Then send them the results of the actual survey once it has been completed.
  4. Invite an organization to try a limited size version of a social media class that you want to pilot.
  5. Invite the CMO of an organization to be your guest at a local tweetup. As you introduce him or her, ask folks to tell share the single most important value of Twitter.

That’s a start. Not everyone of these might work for every organization or environment. The point is to give folks a relevant taste that fits easily into their lives — no risk with noticeable benefit.

How do you invite a shy company to taste social media?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!